The invention relates to a device to be attached to the forks of the forklift, said device adapted for moving a load with a forklift wherein the direction that the forklift can be moved is not the same as the direction in which the load must be moved, and the angle between the two directions is oblique. The invention further relates to a method of moving such a load.
Often, loads must be removed from production machines wherein it is very difficult to move such a load with a standard forklift. In many cases, the movement of such a load must be done manually. Often this is done by one or more men, pulling or pushing a castering lift cart. Such manual movement of a load can be difficult and dangerous wherein the load is very heavy and thus, when loaded on the cart, the cart becomes very difficult to move. Such a procedure can result in undesired injuries in the workplace, for example, strained and twisted backs. In many industries, a finished product is taken up on a spindle, for example, large rolls of paper, carpet rolls, textiles, or plastic films. Many of these rolls can be very large. Some machines upon which these products are taken up on a spindle have one end of the spindle anchored with a pivot point while the other end of the spindle can be released from the machine and rotated out to allow sliding the roll of material off of the spindle. Many such machines only allow the spindle to pivot far enough to slide the load off the spindle. In many cases, it is very difficult to remove this load from the spindle using a forklift and thus, the aforementioned manual removal means are required. This can be very difficult because the product rolls can be very heavy, the manual cart on which the product rolls are placed can become very heavy, and the core upon which the product is wound may become crushed and provide further resistance in moving the rolled product off the spindle.
What is needed is a device and a method which allows the use of a standard forklift to move loads wherein the direction the load must be moved is at an oblique angle to the direction the forklift may be moved.